Ed­i­tor's Note

On a Fe­bru­ary evening flanked by snow­banks and with tem­per­a­tures top­ping out at zero, an ex­tra­or­di­nary new NER event lit up the Mid­dle­bury Col­lege Con­cert Hall. In the first of a new se­ries we call “NER Out Loud,” eight stu­dents from the col­lege Or­a­tory So­ci­ety as­sem­bled on stage, each tak­ing their turn to read a se­lec­tion from the past year's pages. Not only did the stu­dents read these pieces, but they em­bod­ied them. They put them­selves into the writ­ten words fully, not in a the­atri­cal way so much as in a purely vo­cal way, each word given its mo­ment of breath, each phrase shaped by a clear voice. An ASL in­ter­preter stood be­side them and of­fered the words through sign and ges­ture, for the hear­ing and non-hear­ing alike. Authors tend to have com­pli­cated, long-term re­la­tion­ships with their texts and can't help but to ap­proach them as such when they read aloud. These stu­dents had only the words them­selves, just as they were pub­lished, and so were able to of­fer some­thing much closer to the ex­pe­ri­ence of soli­tary read­ing. To lis­ten to them was to have the un­usual sense that the real joy of read­ing, of lan­guage ac­ti­vat­ing the mind, could be shared. Coached by the­ater pro­fes­sor and play­wright Dana Yeaton, each one ap­proached the text with poise, clar­ity, and com­mit­ment. Af­ter the fi­nal poem, once voices then hands went silent, we all gath­ered in the art cen­ter lobby to dig into s'mores and to browse NER and three stu­dent-made lit mags, without get­ting too much marsh­mal­low on them. We also heard s'more read­ings (pun very much in­tended), this time with stu­dents pre­sent­ing their own work from the pages of their mag­a­zines.

It was an am­bi­tious plan for New Eng­land Re­view, and it cer­tainly would not have hap­pened without Dana Yeaton, or without the ef­forts of the Ma­haney Cen­ter for the Arts, or without the sheer en­ergy of the stu­dent or­a­tors. But it also would not have hap­pened without the sup­port of our gen­er­ous and thought­ful donors, who keep NER go­ing year af­ter year and urge us to try new things. In this case they not only pitched in for the hot cho­co­late and the ASL in­ter­preter, but also made it known, early on, that they'd like to see more in­ter­ac­tion be­tween NER and Mid­dle­bury's stu­dents. We have this great jour­nal, well-known on a na­tional level, why not share it more broadly right here on cam­pus? With that idea in mind, and with much cog­i­ta­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, NER Out Loud was born.

With this is­sue we'll be launch­ing new e-edi­tions, in all for­mats, through Sheri­dan Press's Shelf­wise—also with thanks to one of our donors. Now peo­ple who pre­fer read­ing on elec­tronic de­vices or who need a copy of NER right now can get it more eas­ily than they ever have be­fore. Other sup­port­ers, who rec­og­nized our work with emerg­ing writ­ers, asked, how can we help you sup­port emerg­ing writ­ers even more? Be­cause of that con­ver­sa­tion, this sum­mer NER

au­thor Ri­cardo Nuila will be the first to at­tend the Mid­dle­bury Bread Loaf Writ­ers' Con­fer­ence on the new NER schol­ar­ship.

Mid­dle­bury Col­lege pub­lishes this magazine as part of its mis­sion to ed­u­cate and chal­lenge stu­dents, and “to con­nect our com­mu­nity to other places, coun­tries, and cul­tures.” But Mid­dle­bury wouldn't do it without backup. Without these in­di­vid­ual sup­port­ers there would be no e-edi­tions, no read­ings, and no pay­ment for writ­ers. There would be no stipends for edi­tors and no web­site. There would be no s'mores.

And so as is our tra­di­tion, we'd like to call them all by name here in the first is­sue of the new vol­ume. —CK